“That’s good,” chuckled Brownie. “We’re going to have to stand in shallow water and walk in it, too. We must drag our dory up over the rock bed here at the rim of the Everglades.”
In spite of the cold of the water, fed by the overflow from the Everglades which, themselves, are renewed by many streams that spout out cold and clear, from holes in the limestone, they dragged and tugged and laughed softly as they slipped, until, when the dory was over the rim, and into fairly good water, they were quite warm from their exertions.
“Here we are!” said Brownie softly, with a wave of his hand. “Here we are—in the Everglades!”
CHAPTER XXVI
NICKY DOES SOME SCOUTING
“While we rest,” Brownie said to Nicky, “take a good look around. There’s not so many white boys who get to see the Everglades. It’s a sight worth seeing, just at daybreak!”
It was. Nicky stared about, and turned in surprise.
“Why, I thought,” he said, amazed. “I thought the ’Glades were all swamps. They’re not, at all!”
“Many a one has the wrong idea,” retorted Brownie affably. “In truth, the ’Glades are just flat bedrock, mostly, under a couple of feet of water, and with a very thin soil that the grass hangs onto. Down South’ard, you see, where the trees are, that’s Big Cypress. That’s all swamp, I admit, and bad to get into. This would be as bad if you got lost in it, and that wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”
Mr. Neale agreed with him, while Nicky, standing upright on the forward thwart, forgot his wet feet in the beauty and strangeness of the scene before him.
At the Eastern edge of the ’Glades, the sun was rising, casting its slanting, golden rays across a great expanse of grass, and more grass, and yet more grass.